Chicken Pathia:Sweet andSour Indian Curry

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Chicken Pathia: Sweet and Sour Indian Curry

When I lived in the UK there was a phase when a Chicken Pathia was the only thing I ordered from an Indian menu. Not because I didn’t like or understand the other stuff! Purely and simply because it was my favourite thing on any menu.

As with all phases, they pass but a chicken pathia remains one of my favourite dishes. Fabulously spicy and with a distinct sweet and sour vibe.

As a result it was only going to be so long before it ended up joining my list of Indian Curry Recipes!

Getting Started With My Pathia Curry!

I started working this recipe after my first trip back to the UK a number of years ago.

One of the first things we did was to go out for a curry. Of course!

This was what I ordered and it reignited my love for this sweet and sour curry. So when we returned to Hungary this was a dish I knew I had to recreate.

Naturally, Google was my first port of call and low and behold every recipe I found was different.Aint that always the way!

After trying a few I knew that I would be creating my own new recipe. As none of what I found sounded or even tasted like what I know as a chicken pathia.

The Great British Curry House.

Apparently, this dish is of Gujarati and Persian origin but as you know by now I am never driven by authenticity. But by what makes my belly smile, so I kinda took the basis of a pathia or indeed patia as it is sometimes called.

A spicy, sweet and sour curry with a tomato based sauce and built it up from experiments and memories.

So I set out on trying to learn how to make my chicken pathia curry!

As I mentioned in my Chicken Balti recipe, Indian restaurants in the UK usually start with a base sauce and build from there.

Sure this is for convenience and I will always build a new sauce. However, this cooking method leads to a distinctive style in terms of texture. So as ever this was my base point for this and most of my British Indian Restaurant style dishes.

My Eureka moment with this chicken pathia recipe came with the addition of mango chutney as the sweet element and I have no idea where it came from. I tried all sorts of sweet elements from sugar and honey through to jaggery. But nothing came close to being quite so good as this.

The combination of the sweetness and fruitiness is perfect. Naturally, the recipe will change flavour depending on your mango chutney but that is all part of the magic. If you wanna make your own give this mango chutney recipe by the ever wonderful Striped Spatula a spin! I do on occasions make my own but we are not exactly overwhelmed by fresh mango here in central Europe.

As such I tend to go with shop bought. It is, however, a great excuse for a taste test, stock up on poppadoms!

The usual habitat for a chicken pathia seems to be a British curry house, I think this fiery sweet and sour number with Gujarati leanings should be shown a lot more love.

Course:
Main Course

Cuisine:
Indian

Servings: 2

Calories: 575kcal

Author: Brian Jones

Ingredients

200gOnion

4ClovesGarlic

1TbspGheeSub for butter or neutral cooking oil

1/8TspAsafoetidaAKA Hing

1TspChili Flakes

2TspTurmeric

1TspGround Cumin

100mlTamarind Pulp

3TbspTomato Paste

2TbspMango Chutney

4Cardamom Pods

1Bay Leaf

1TbspLime Juice

1TbspGheeSub for butter or neutral cooking oil

350gChicken2cm dice, I personally prefer thigh but breast would work too

1TbspDried Fenugreek Leaves

Salt to Taste

Instructions

Cut the onion in half and peel, roughly chop half and place in a blender with the garlic cloves and blitz, using just enough water to form a smooth paste.

Take the second half of the onion and slice into 8 wedges and set aside.

Heat the ghee over a medium high heat and when warm add the asafoetida and chili flakes and cook for 30 seconds.

Now add in the onion and garlic paste, reduce the heat to medium and cook for 5 minutes.

Stir in the turmeric and cumin, stir and cook for 60 seconds before adding the tamarind pulp, tomato paste and mango chutney.

Now throw in the bay leaf, cardamom pods and lime juice, check seasoning and add salt as required and allow to simmer for 15 minutes over a low heat.

After the sauce has been simmering for 10 minutes, heat the second tablespoon of ghee in another pan over a medium high heat and when hot add the chicken and remaining onion from step 1 then cook moving occasionally for 3-4 minutes.

Transfer to the sauce then add in the fenugreek leaves and cook for a further minute or so and then and simmer until cooked with a lid on, this should take a further 5-10 minutes.

30 Comments

Hey Mrs Garner… That’s a tough one, Tamarind has an almost sweet and sour earthy flavour, you will never get it exactly the same without using tamarind but for this recipe I would suggest using lemon or lime juice.

You should have plenty of sweetness from the mango chutney, you need to balance that out with your souring agent. So taste as you go until you get a balance you are happy with.

If you can get it Mango powder which is also known as amchur will help with adding a bit more ‘sourness and earthiness’ to dish. Again you will need to do this to taste.

Which ever you add throw them in at stage 6 on the list and test as it is cooking down for the 15 minutes.

Thank you for your reply. I will order the block of tamarind pulp so I can follow your recipes more precisely. Like I said, the curry was delishous, both sweet and sour as yiou describe. I am getting better with metric measurements, thanks to your site. Best, Gail

As an American and being unfamiliar with the metric system of measurement, could you explain the 100ml of tamarind pulp? I was making this recipe and got to the tamarind and realized that the 100ml was over 1/2 cup and that just didn’t seem right. I subbed a 1/2 cup water, making the sauce thin enough to simmer, then added tamarind concentrate to taste. It turned out great, but having never had pathia before, I wonder if I did it right. I served it with basmati rice and naan and it was a hit. Love your site.

Hey Gail, sorry I have been away so have not had chance to write the reply you deserve from my phone. Firstly I am so glad you enjoyed the recipe it really is a favourite of mine and you absolutely did the right thing in terms of making it taste right for you. It would seem that tamarind pulp means different things around the world (which is new to me so I am glad that you flagged it up), I’ll be doing some more research and updating all of my recipes that contain tamarind to reference exactly what I use.

But in the interim and for your reference, tamarind in the main here in Europe is sold as a sticky large block which you cut a section off and soak in boiling water, the resulting mash needs to be passed through a sieve and forms the tamarind ‘pulp’. I will need to try and understand what other forms it comes in order to make a full comment. However the joy of foods like this is that you can taste as you go, also one of the greatest perks. In short a pathia should be intensly sweet and sour so you need a lot of tamarind to sit along side the mango chutney, hence the 100ml which is just under half a cup.

I’m still looking for a solution that I can add for converting amounts from metric to imperial and cups but all of them end up being deeply disappointing in real use and I personally find googling a much more reliable result than relying on a website plugin.

Thanks one again for taking the time to write and whilst this answer is not yet complete I hope it helps a little.

One of my favourite restaurant curries. I do a lot of Gujarati cooking and have a few twists on the Pathia too, often add my home made spicy (really spicy – made with peach nagas) mango chutney which works so well with this dish.

Brian what a fabulous and rich looking curry this is. I love the golden glow in your photograph. It is very inviting and reminds us all how good curries are. They certainly play a big part in our diet.

I am an Indian, but haven’t ever tried this. That first shot definitely drew my attention and I now need to try it. The addition of mango chutney sounds like a great discovery and something I will definitely experiment with when I next cook and Indian chicken curry.

The mango chutney idea came from an Indian friend mayn years ago when living in the UK, I love the complexity it adds to the dish and apparently it was her Indian way of playing around with way Brits add Marmalade to an orange chicken casserole 🙂

It certainly tastes like an authentic ‘Anglo Indian’ Curry, although they do typically vary a little from the curries I tried when I visited India and Pakistan many years ago although the base flavours are very similar.

Thanks Shashi, its appearance in the UK also seems very focused on the Midlands as I rarely saw it during my time living in the south of the UK or when visiting the North… It’s fascinating how migrant populations bring very specific food with them, when they arrive on foreign shores, I know I have done the same with very specific British regional dishes now I live in Hungary 🙂

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About Me

My name is Brian and back in 2008 myself and my wife quit our ‘real’ jobs in the UK, I picked up a spade and a camera and we moved to a small village in Rural Hungary to grow food, brew wine and take pictures. You will get no gimmicks, no trends, no dietary advice and no life advice here, just good food and the occasional story or two.